


Dirges in the Dark

by tywinning



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: 1970s, F/M, Modern AU, Vietnam Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 18:53:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5939518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tywinning/pseuds/tywinning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lyanna was a runner, in every since of the word. </p><p>Vietnam War-era AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dirges in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> The title is taken from Don McLean's 1971 song, "American Pie"

Lyanna was a runner, in every since of the word.

She wore holes in her high tops by the time she reached New York, though she had made her way as much by thumb as by foot. A van stopped for her by the shores of Lake Erie. “Cowboy!” She smiled at the man who stepped out, before remembering how her big horsey grin made her look even younger than she was. She bit her lips. “Any room for a stranger?”

The spurs of his purple boots clicked against the pavement as he came over to her and tipped his snowy white hat, his eyes sparkling as he asked her name.  _Such a beautiful color._

“ _Lya,_ ” she managed, a little breathless. He had to be at least twenty-five.  _Fool! You’re a fool, Lyanna_ , she berated herself, trying not to think of his broad shoulders.  _At least I remembered enough not to give him my last name._

His own name was one that belonged at the Round Table, with manners to match. “I’m Arthur,” he said in a soft Texan drawl, bowing over her hand and smiling in a way that made her face flush. “And you can call him Ray.” He nodded to the man in the driver’s seat, but Ray studied the empty road ahead, as if afraid he might lose sight of it, even parked on the shoulder. Ray was sweating. His fingers drummed against the steering wheel. The flash of annoyance on Arthur’s face was gone quick as lightning. He went on so smoothly Lyanna convinced herself she must have imagined it. “And now we aren’t strangers anymore.” He held the door open for her like a footman in a fairytale, and Lyanna climbed in. 

“Where are you headed, Miss... Lya?” Arthur asked, taking out a road map.

 _Away,_  she wanted to tell him as the engine rumbled to life, but this was a man of realities as cold and hard as the gun he wore concealed at his hip. It pressed against her bare midriff as she settled herself between the two men in the front seat.  _I want to run away, as far as the road can take me, and then farther still,_  she thought.  _Someplace beyond the horizon._  Lyanna named the farthest city she could think of, but even that wasn’t far enough.  

“You’re going to the Jazz Festival?” Rhaegar looked over at her for the first time, and Lyanna couldn’t understand the regret she saw in his eyes. They were indigo, like Arthur’s, but his hair was the silver of a starry night instead of the pale gold of morning. “I’ve always wanted to go to the Monterey Jazz Festival. Maybe play my guitar.” His face was kind, but with a weary sadness that threatened to overwhelm him. Rhaegar looked like a man who could understand a place like _Away_. 

“Well, now you can!” Lyanna said. She hoped to cheer him, but her words had the opposite effect. 

“Just drive, Rhaegar,” Arthur said. “We’ll be there soon enough.”

 _No, we won’t. We could spend forever chasing after Away, and still never find it._  

“I can find it,” Rhaegar said, and Lyanna started. She hadn’t realized she’d spoken. “It’s going to be okay now.” He smiled at her, and gripped her hand reassuringly. 

All the way to Cleveland, Lyanna imagined slender fingers caressing guitar strings. Dylan sang on the radio of The Times A-Changin, and Lyanna could almost believe it. Rhaegar sang along whenever the songs turned sad, and Lyanna smeared her mascara wiping at her eyes. Broad shoulders never crossed her mind.

She was fifteen.

 

* * *

 

 

“You didn’t tell me you were  _married_.”

Lyanna held out Ray’s wallet accusingly. It had “Made in Italy” stamped into the red leather, despite his clothing. Inside were snapshots of a girl with a smile almost as big as she was, and a baby boy splashing in his bathwater, and a woman in white laughing as she fed Ray wedding cake.

“You never asked.”

“What’s the story with you two anyway? I saw all your survivalist shit in the back. Are you draft dodgers or something?"

Arthur said “yes” at the same time Ray said “no.” He shot Ray an exasperated look, but then he shrugged. “I happen to like living. That’s what this trip is about. Ray wouldn’t mind touring the jungle, though.” 

“I ain’t no senator’s son.” Ray laughed, and sang a snatch of one of the billboard hits. 

"And what’s with the books on ‘other-worldly beings’? You like those crazies who believe in UFOs?”

“Don’t be absurd.” 

 

* * *

 

 

Lyanna found a grease-stained newspaper at a McDonald’s in Chicago. She read it while Arthur ate and Ray sang. _STARK STILL MISSING_ the headline screamed. Above the fold was a larger-than-life photo of a girl in a choker of pearls, her dark hair coiffed into a perfect beehive, her future planned for the next fifty years. No one would ever suspect that girl of being a runner. The words in the picture were blurry from enlargement, but Lyanna knew what they said. WHITE HARBOR BOARDING SCHOOL FOR GIRLS.

“You’d think that child was the damn Lindbergh baby with all the press she gets,” Arthur said when she saw him looking. He smiled at her and took another sip of his Coke as she hurried to turn the page, latching onto the first story that caught her eye. “Arthur, what’s napalm? Why does the President want more of it?”

“Gimme that.” Arthur snatched the newspaper from her hands to read. “Ray. _Ray!_ _Rhaegar, have you seen this?_ ”

Ray only continued his song, his stage a McDonald’s countertop, his audience the slack-jawed teen behind the register. _“Do you believe in rock and roll? Can music save your mortal soul? And can you teach me how to dance real slow...”_

Lyanna wore her sunglasses for the rest of the day.

 

* * *

 

 

“Everything I do, I do for my family, you understand?” he said suddenly, late one night on a lonely highway in Nebraska while Creedence Clearwater warned of a bad moon rising over the radio. The dark was pressing close around them and it was easy to imagine something waiting just beyond the path cut by the headlights. “I’m doing this for everyone. You, me, the Russians, the VC,  _the whole fucking world_. But I’m doing it for my kids most of all. All three of them. You understand, don’t you?  _Don’t you?_ ” She didn’t understand half of it, but the urgency in his voice frightened her into saying yes. It seemed so important to him that she understand.

“Easy, Ray. Easy. You’re scaring her.” Arthur had woken up and put a hand on his friend’s shoulder, as if to steady him. “It’s just a bad trip, man. A bad trip, am I right? Why not let me drive? He’s having a bad trip, Lya. The koolaid doesn’t agree with him.”

Later, while Ray slept fitfully and the whole world turned from black to grey, Arthur spoke again. “Rhaegar is a good man. I believe in him.”

Lyanna asked only one question. “What did he mean, all three of them? I’ve only seen pictures of the boy and the girl.”

“He’s expecting a third.” 

“His wife must be very happy.” 

“How old are you?” Arthur asked at a sun-bleached gas station, its white Texaco pumps rising up like boney fingers from the desert. On the horizon, the sandstone buttes of Monument Valley stood like castle towers silhouetted against the setting sun.

“Eighteen,” Lyanna said around her gum. “What are you running from? Rhaegar’s running toward something, but you … what are you running from?”

“Cut the crap, girl. How old?”

“ _Eighteen_.” The lie came as easily as blowing a bubble. “What are you running from?”

He walked abruptly away, rubbing his hands on his white pants as if trying to wipe them clean. On the radio, the senator from Colorado demanded the President’s impeachment, until Rhaegar climbed into the van and turned the dial until he found a song he liked. “Ready?”

 

* * *

 

9,998 steps. Lyanna counted them, once, following the smooth white walls on her morning run around the compound. 9,998 steps from where she started, 9,998 steps _away_ , running as hard and as fast as she could, and still she ended up at the locked gate where her run began.

Her skin was stretched tight across her stomach, spiderwebbed with red lines as angry as she. Rhaegar said her child would save the world, but when Lyanna asked who would save _her_ , the words died on his lips. He had no more songs to sing for her.

So she ran.

Arthur accompanied — _guarded,_ Lyanna thought bitterly — her most mornings, trying to outrun his own demons. He brought her magazines like _Women’s Weekly_ , and pointed out articles that said exercise was healthful for expectant mothers. Lyanna wondered if it would make a difference. They had no doctor.

“Why aren’t you ever stationed at the gate? Hightower, Whent, all the other men have guard duty. Why not you?”

“Rhaegar doesn’t trust me at the gate,” he said simply. Arthur had told her of the deaths of her father and eldest brother.

“Still like living?” Lyanna spat at him.

“Your brother’s coming.” Arthur’s hand fell to his hip, resting on his gun. "It shouldn't be long now."

**Author's Note:**

> Posted on tumblr [here](http://joannalannister.tumblr.com/post/138846431181/lyanna-was-a-runner-in-every-since-of-the-word)


End file.
